Britain’s forgotten slave owners

Has anyone been watching “Britain’s forgotten slave owners” by David Olusoga on BBC2 (available on iPlayer)?

I was unaware of the massive compensation paid by the British government to previous slave owners after slavery was abolished in 1834.  It amounted to £17 billion in today’s money.  The Slave Compensation Commission received petitions from 46,000 slave owners, of whom 3,000 lived in Britain.  The ones who lived in Britain constituted 50% of slave holdings in the Empire. 

The programme (I watched the first in the series) showed the seepage of money from the slave trade into many areas of British society.  Slave owners were not only aristocrats, as we might suspect, but also were also found among the upper and lower middle classes (i.e., the existing and emerging capitalists), and down to more “ordinary” widows and clergymen.

Hideous instruments of torture and subjugation were displayed to the camera, with the presenter visibly moved by the sight of the instruments.  An African slave arriving in the Caribbean to work on the sugar plantations could expect to live an average of 7 more years.

Peerages were aawrded, political careers and great mansions built on the fortunes made in the slave trade; the wealth then percolated down to current generations by way of inheritance.

Great wealth is respected and looked up to by most in our society, and slavery is one of the corner stones on which it was built.

Wealth should not be respected but despised for the stench that attaches to it.